Interpretations of PD 10 Discussion

To explain this to others, all that is necessary is to point out observations in reality about pleasure and pain in their lives, and the role of choice and avoidance.

Quote from Elayne

Cassius I'm not using logic.

I see this as the root of our current disagreement and we will resolve it at some point.

I would say that a reasonable person on the street would say that you ARE using logic, in looking at the full context of all the texts, and also comparing to to the feelings that you have and that you can presume Epicurus had.

You don't wish to call that "logic" because you are referring to "formal logic" and saying that what you are doing is not "formal logic."

I'm just going to have to find some place for a definition reference, because I firmly think that the target audience we should be aiming for would be very confused by insisting that "logical" or "reasonable" implies formal logic of the Let A = B and B=C; therefore A=C variety.

I was thinking about that this afternoon. I think the target audience (at least the one I am most interested in) would see issues of "logic" vs "feeling" in terms of Spock and McCoy and Kirk.

Spock symbolizes logic and reason - he is data driven to the extreme, but he has no emotion and thus is frequently mistaken because he does not have the human faculty of feeling emotion (he can, presumably, feel pain and pleasure of a type).

McCoy symbolizes the extreme of feeling - he does in fact refer to reason and logic in his medicine, but he is caricature of someone whose emotions clearly run ahead of his reason.

Kirk, is the superior synthesis and combination of both reason and feeling. He is superior to both McCoy and Spock and thus gives the ultimate orders. Within Kirk, it is feeling that ultimately does the decision making, but he does his best to incorporate data-driven logic and reason, because he knows that that is frequently the way to unwind problems. And that is the Epicurean model as I see it.

All of us have our limitations and I am afraid this is mine. I am very aware that you are correct that there is a significant set of people who hear the words "logic" and "reason" and interpret them as you are doing, in formal terms.

The people in my daily world have no clue what "formal logic" is, and any notion they have of it is receding further into the background every day. Yes I want to explain all this to the academicians who use the formal terms,. but they are not my first concern - they are the ones who have botched Epicurean philosophy (in my eyes) for 2000+years. And I want to give the "regular people" a chance, especially because it is my understanding through Cicero that that is who Epicurus actually played to and were most enthusiastic about him.

This is where we need a division of labor and specialization. Those who move in circles which require the words "logic" and "reason" to be used "formally" will need a presentation of their own. In my view, the best compromise to deal with the largest set of people is to use terms like "abstract logic/reason" or "theoretical logic/reason" or similar words to indicate that the premises being used are not observable or verifiable or reliably repeatable through the senses.

And to use a more classy analogy than Star Trek, this is what I would assert is expressed in Jefferson's "Head and Heart" letter. in which the heart wins out in the end

Don if the fullness of pleasure is in a pill, you haven't cut yourself off from anything. Again, that would be a huge decision and I'm not likely to trust such a pill purveyer. But the Epicurean life is about pleasure, and about the methods that work to get it. He recommends choice/avoidance because they work. If something else worked better, he would recommend something else. It's a pragmatic thing, not an absolute.

I see that I was sloppy in my wording!

The Canon and choices and avoidances are not the point of EP but are instrumental. Being instrumental, they are necessary to maximize pleasure (unless one lives a charmed life) with pleasure being the goal. To my understanding if you remove the opportunity to choose, you remove the opportunity to maximize pleasure. Elayne you're correct that this isn't what is spelled out in PD.

Regarding the example of buying a condo: this may reduce the opportunity for choice, but in no way eliminates it. Even after making the purchase there can be continual evaluation as to what might bring the most pleasure or pain: sell it for a profit and buy a more pleasant home, keep it to avoid the pain of moving, remodel it to increase pleasure, sell it because of a more pleasant job opportunity elsewhere, etc etc.

Godfrey the instrumental use of choice and avoidance is only instrumental so long as it works better than anything else. So far, that's what we've observed. However, if some new technology comes about to change that situation and relinquishing choice and avoidance provides maximal pleasure, then that new strategy would be the wisest choice.

Analogies are never perfect-- my condo analogy was meant as an example of how one choice can reduce access to subsequent choices, and that's not always bad.

Let me try again-- I chose to have two children. By doing so, I affected my body in permanent ways. I can't choose to be nulliparous now-- it's done. We make choices frequently that limit other future options. To do it one time would be an extreme, of course, but I see nothing in the philosophy that would rule out making one optimizing choice vs going for a series.

You're darn right she is, because that kind of hypothetical is what we're talking about !!

Maybe we should propose a segment on the nature of a bliss pill for our 20th Skype meeting!

I am going to start a new thread on one aspect of this I want to explore - "dialectics" Dialectics and Hypothetical Questions

Probably it's not worded the best way possible, but eventually it will be something to come back to....

Don I've said repeatedly that the Devil is in the details and I'd tend to be distrustful of the sellers. And I think such a pill is highly unlikely to ever happen. But yes, as Cassius says, that is the hypothetical, and that is why I answered the actual hypothetical question as presented 😉.

Now, it's fine with me if someone wants to say "that hypothetical would never happen, so I'm not going to answer it." But that's different from changing the hypothetical and then saying someone who answered the actual question is wrong. We would be answering two different questions and the conversation would be confused, as it has been here!

Maybe we need to acknowledge that in my spare time I am a lawyer and Elayne was married to one, so the two of us are maybe too familiar with hypothetical questions....

Don that _is_ the condition of the hypothetical. In a hypothetical, it's not necessary for the stated condition to be possible. For instance, when Epicurus talked about what a supernatural god would be like-- if all powerful and all knowing, then clearly not loving-- he knew there were no supernatural gods. So it is unnecessary for there to exist such a technology in order to talk about what the wise choice would be IF it existed.

Speaking outside the hypothetical-- obviously there is no such thing currently. Could there be a technology developed which actually learns from individuals what they enjoy and dislike? And which adjusts actions over time-- maybe a nano-robot kind of pill? Maybe so. It's not a completely ridiculous idea. I doubt I would trust it, but that doesn't mean I would be correct.

I think Elayne's post gets to the heart of the issue -- it is the nature of many hypotheticals that it is not necessary for the stated condition to be possible. If we want to draw a bright line and say that the stated conditions MUST be possible, then we need to be clear that we are doing that, because those are two types of hypotheticals. Don if you want to advance that proposition please do, because it seems to me it is possible that Epicurus took that position, but I can't conclude that at the moment without more review.

However here I would word differently:

Quote from Elayne

Epicurus talked about what a supernatural god would be like

I am not aware of a text in which Epicurus talked about what a SUPERNATURAL god would look like. The Riddle might qualify, but I am not sure that is Epicurus. I think Epicurus was always clear that "gods" are NOT supernatural so I do not recall that he even entertained that hypothetical. If anyone knows of a text of Epicurus theorizing based on a god having supernatural qualities lets add it here so we can be precise. I might be wrong about this but it would be worth being very clear on this point, since we are talking about in part whether Epicurus used "impossible" hypotheticals, and if there are clearly impossible hypotheticals on gods that would help the discussion.

Quote from Don

Is social media the "bliss pill" we need to deal with?

No!

Don do you have evidence social media is making people have bliss? I thought the prevailing evidence was to the contrary. I assume that's why Cassius said no.

Cassius, yes, the riddle-- well yes, I added the term supernatural because I thought it was an argument against the kind of gods people who believed in supernatural gods were proposing. However my point still stands that he was posing hypotheticals about a type of creature he didn't agree exists. If it was him.